Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes (1769-1825);
By descent to the Revd. Ayscough Fawkes, his sale London, Christie's, 27 June 1890, lot 50 (bt. by Sir Donald Currie (1825-1909));
By descent

Leeds, Music Hall, An Exhibition of Miscellaneous Works of Art, 1839, no. 32;
Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art and Kyoto, the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, in association with the British Council, Turner, August - November 1986, no. 74, p. 195;
London, Royal Academy, Turner The Great Watercolours, December 2000 - February 2001, cat. no. 52, pp. 142, 143 & 145;
Budapest, Museum of Fine arts, Turner and Italy, July - October 2009, pp. 60 & 62

A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, p. 69;
A. Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London 1979, no. 719, p. 383;
C. Powell, Turner in the South, Rome, Naples, Florence, London 1987, pp. 104 -109, ill. 105;
E. Shanes, Turner's Watercolour Explorations, London 1997, p. 20;
A. Wilton and C. Powell, Paths to Fame/Turner Watercolours from the Courtauld Gallery, London 2008, p. 92

Condition report supplied by Jane Mcausland FIIC Support Turner has used a sheet of Whatman type wove paper to support this watercolour, which has been lined with Japan paper and given a false margin of a laid modern paper. The condition is good. Medium There is a small scratch int he pigment in the sky upper left and the more delicate tints have faded over the years, otherwise the condition is good. Note This work was viewed outside studio conditions
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This beautiful watercolour, dated 1820 and taken from sketches of 1819, shows Rome from just below the brow of Monte༒ Mario. Further down the steep slope is part of the roof of Villa Madama, and beyond in the flat valley are pa🍰stures and houses with smoke rising into a still sky. The emphasis is placed on the peace of a warm sultry summer's evening. In the foreground, resting by some thick foliage, are a boy and a girl, he playing a pipe as she watches coyly. 

The view looks south east from the side of Rome's tallest hill. In the valley, sprinkled among open fields, are houses and lines of trees, while running straight across the fields to the Vatican, parallel to the slopes of Monte Mario, is the Viale Angelico. Near the centre of the view is Castel Sant'Angelo and across the Tiber is the Eternal city of Rome. John Chetwode Eustace, the Anglo-Irish priest and antiquary who journeyed to Italy in 1804, made a lengthy description of the city in A Classical Tour of Italy, published in 1813, 'The Tiber intersecting the city and winding through rich meadows: the Prata Quintia and Prata Mutia, fields still bearing their names, the trophies of Roman virtue and Roman heroism: the Pons Milvius with its tower, and the plains consecrated by the victory of Constantine; the Vatican Palace with its courts and gardens; the Basilica of St Peter with its portico, its obelisk, and its fountains, the Campus Martius covered with the churches, square and palaces of the modern city'. Across the river Turner includes these important buildings; St Peter's and the Vatican, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Campanile of the Palazzo Sentario on the Capitol, the two domes of the Porta del Popolo, the Church of Trinita dei Monti, the obelisk of Piazza dell'Esquilino, the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Quirinal Palace, Torre delle Milizie and the Colosseum.  Surviving studies in the Turner Bequest, dating from Turner's visit to Rome in 1819, include a drawing which closely matches this view (TB. CLXXXIX-31) and one double page study in the St Peter's sketchbook (TB. CLXXXVIII 11a-12)- a swift sketch, in which Turneܫr also shows the main buildings included in this final composition.

Comparison between the plein air studies and this watercolour drawn the following year, shows that Turner was careful to record the actual view.  By also introducing a warm summer evening atmosphere with two colourful young figures, he created a most romantic as well as appealing view of the valley with the city beyond. It has been suggested that on this tour of Italy, he was struck by the warm Italian light in works by Claude, and he created the same feeling of tranquillity in Rome from San Pietro in Montorio (Courtauld Institute of Art), the watercolour most closely linked to the present work. The Rome that was celebrated in the near contemporary publication of Henry Sass's book, entitled A Journey to Rome and Naples, published in 1818, is omnipotently present here but now conceived as the backdrop to a summer's evening with the instance of the young girl and boy.

Although the 1819 trip was Turner's first visit to Rome, he had tackled this subject before, copying a drawing by James Hakewill (now untraced) and producing a watercolour which was then engraved by John Byrne.  The contrast between that watercolour and the lot offered here is highly revealing of the genius of the artist. From the slightly sterile earlier view comes, through first-hand experience, a brilliant synthesis of space and light, colour and form. Turner has been able to show the distance and the space, and he has created a feeling of stillness and heat in the valley shortly to be relieved by the sun setting. In the foreground the boy and the girl introduce an element of narrative and instead of introducing drama through movement Turner conjures up drama through sound. The boy's pipe, an aulo or tibia, interrupts the stillness of the landscape, which is so typical of Turner in its subtlety and in its demand for interpretation from the viewer.  The overriding impression of this watercolour is one of tranquillity. One can imagine the music of the pipe floating across the quiet valley below, and almost certainly Turner would have had in mind the planned destination with this watercolour, the collection of his close friend Walter Fawkes, (as for the previous lot Venice from Fusina).

This watercolour was exhibited in the Royal Academy's Turner, The Great Watercolours in 2000/1, no. 52, and in the entry for the accompanying catalogue, the drawing of the foliage in the lower right corner was illustrated and described as a 'technical tour de force'. A close examination shows the complexity and yet fluency of Turner's technique: he uses for instance a combination of brush strokes both to draw saplings and to suggest them by laying darker wash in the shadows, by increasing the modelling with scratches and softer stopping out, and then finally applying gum arabic to deepen the shadows.

Both Venice from Fusina and this work were commissioned by Walter Fawkes, the two jewels in the crown of eight major works from Turner's first journey to Italy commiss𒅌ioned by his close friend and one of his most importa❀nt patrons.

Further inf🌳ormation on this work provided by James Miller, S.G.L., Cecilia Powell, David Laven and Peter Bower, is accessible online at laitexier.com and in published form via the department.